SANTA CRUZ — A city-run homeless camp will close up at the end of November after a nine-month run, replaced with an indoor winter shelter program halved from previous years.

The chain link fence-enclosed River Street Camp, with nearly 50 tents on a city-owned dirt lot, opened March 1 as an emergency stopgap measure to relocate dozens of people that had been sleeping in a highly visible San Lorenzo Park encampment since late October.

The city of Santa Cruz’s pivot to close the camp, announced early Tuesday, came shortly after the Salvation Army Santa Cruz Corps agreed to run a 60-bed North County winter shelter site at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post No. 7263 building on Seventh Avenue in Live Oak – a contract pending approval from the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors this month. The Live Oak site represents about half of the winter shelter beds offered for the previous two winters, as the Salvation Army’s own 50-bed Laurel Street building, used in the past two years, has been taken out of play.

“We’ve always felt that as we move into the winter, windy, cold, more severe elements, that we would rather, the preferred model would be to have a roof over people’s heads, to have a physical shelter,” Assistant City Manager Tina Shull said.

Shull said the decision to close the River Street Camp was made jointly by the Homeless Action Partnership executive committee, made up of representatives from the city, Santa Cruz County, and Scotts Valley and Capitola. The interagency group has divided up the camp’s 75,000- to $90,000-a-month cost since July 1. The city’s 2018-2019 budget includes a $171,448 line item for a winter shelter — the same amount as the city set aside last year — in addition to $100,000 for an interim homeless facility.

Long-term vision

At the same time as officials announced the campsite’s pending opening, the city laid out an ambitious three-phase plan to move people from the city lot to a leased temporary homeless shelter site to an eventual permanent new shelter location. The timeline for the second stage was repeatedly pushed back, with the most recent decision in August to allow the site to remain available, and potentially expanded for an additional 20 people, through as late as April. Shull said Tuesday that the extension was requested because, at the time, officials did not know whether or not an indoor winter shelter site would be available.

If the camp were to have remained open through the winter, along with the VFW site, the North County would be able to shelter a similar number of people as in previous winters, at about 110 beds. That option was short-circuited, however, by funding considerations, Shull said.

“We’ve already been offering 50 to 60 people a place to be for five extra months. We’re actually getting a nine- or 10-month program instead of a five-month program,” Shull said. “So, it was budget and finances. It wasn’t affordable to be operating two or three different sites.”

Camp denizens bombarded city officials with questions and concerns Tuesday morning, when the site’s pending closure was first announced, said city Principal Management Analyst Susie O’Hara. To date, 86 people have stayed at the camp since its launch, with 23 relocating to improved living situations, five receiving bus tickets out of town and three taking up residency in inpatient treatment programs, O’Hara said. At an August meeting, camp shuttle driver Dora Berlanga pleaded with the Santa Cruz City Council not to take away the River Street Camp, with its site security and consistent meals, showers, bathrooms and more.

Shoring up the supply

Along with plans to shutter the camp, the city announced that it also will be subsidizing Santa Cruz’s major emergency homeless shelter program, the 40-bed Paul Lee Loft at the Homeless Services Center on Coral Street. Shull said city and county officials agreed to preserve the shelter program, which was “at risk of coming offline,” by providing “tens of thousands of dollars” in support. Phil Kramer, the center’s executive director, said the county has agreed to spend $16,700 per month for four months to help cover a portion of the loft and a shower hygiene bay’s expenses. In total, the two have a combined $711,700 annual cost that is subsidized by grants and the overarching Homeless Services Center budget, Kramer said.

Separately, a city plan shared in August to expand the Loft by an additional 20 beds will take “quite a bit of startup” for capital and staffing costs and is still being discussed, she said. As winter approaches, the city and its partners will continue researching additional shelter, day service and storage program options, Shull said.

Brent Adams, an advocate for homeless-related issues and service provider, has been publicly critical of the city’s spending on the River Street Camp. Adams, who spent months visiting and investigating homeless facilities up and down the West Coast last year, has pushed for the city to find more effective and fiscally sustainable options. After the River Street Camp’s opening scuttled the city’s previously planned storage program, which Adams was on deck to operate, Adams moved forward this year in self-funding a new homeless storage program. Last month, the Day & Night Storage Program moved from a bus into a secured indoor location, at 150 Felker St., Suite H. The storage program’s hours are 7-9 a.m. and 5-7 p.m. daily.

“Let’s do the math. You close that camp – on a good day, they have 60 campers in there, but that’s not street homelessness anymore,” Adams said. “What they’re doing is essentially displacing the encampment and picking up 60 winter shelter beds – that’s a gain of zero to my mind. So, you’re still down 100 beds.”

Adams, who also runs the Warming Center Program, using rotating church sites in both Watsonville and Santa Cruz, said he is gearing up for larger-than-average turnout on the winter’s coldest and wettest nights, due to changes in the North County winter shelter plans.

Ease of access

Those staying at the River Street Camp for an extended period have had what city officials refer to as a low-barrier for entry, allowed to bring a large amount of possessions and their pets, stay with their partners and access their tents day and night. From six to eight of the camp’s denizens also have been employed by the city to work as camp hosts overseeing day-to-day operations. The approximately two dozen hosts may be eligible for unemployment once the camp closes, said O’Hara.

In contrast, the VFW site will be available only during evening hours, with a first-come, first-served model that does not allow pets and has limited possession storage. O’Hara said campers will be relocated to the winter shelter 10 tents at a time over five days, and that each will be guaranteed one night of first-priority stay at the VFW building before needing to compete for limited space with other shelter-seekers.

This year, the Salvation Army has agreed to up security at the VFW site to assuage neighborhood concerns, with a security guard stationed on-site, in addition to metal detection wands at the door. Both the camp and VFW site require people to be bused in, rather than allowing walk-ups.